Scientist David Boyd has developed the new graphene growing technique in physicist and collaborator Nai-Chang Yeh’s laboratory at Caltech. The Caltech innovation could pave the way for commercially feasible graphene-based solar cells and LEDS, large-panel displays, and flexible electronics.

Scientist David Boyd holds a copper sample that have been coated with graphene, a material made up of an atom-thick layer of carbon, in physicist and collaboratorNai-Chang Yeh’s laboratory at Caltech in Pasadena Tuesday.

PASADENA >> Caltech scientists solved an enigma, which intrigued scientists for over a decade when they recently discovered a method to mass produce a wonder material as revolutionary as carbon fiber.

Graphene, at one-atom thickness, is the thinnest compound known to man. Yet it is 200 times stronger than steel and can move electrons across its surface up to three orders of magnitude better than silicon. Scientists and industry experts want to exploit graphene to produce things such as bendable computer screens, desalinated water, more efficient solar panels and lightning fast microcomputers. Really, the possibilities have yet to be discovered.

Since October 2004, when physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov published a paper describing what some characterized as the science fiction properties of graphene, scientists and industry experts the world over have tried and failed to create ways to manufacture graphene, a cheap, earth-abundant carbon material.

In July 2011, there were 3,108 published patent applications worldwide, according to the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office. Eighteen months later, that number nearly tripled to 8,416. Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, Zhejiang University in China and IBM in the U.S. were the leaders in patent applications.

The problem, however, is known techniques require people to “grow” graphene in furnaces that heat up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said they are the first to invent a technique that will allow fast, room-temperature production of miles-long sheets of high-quality graphene.

David Boyd, a Caltech staff scientist who developed the new technique, called previous methods “rather barbaric” compared to what he accidentally discovered in 2012. Now the material can be created at 842 degrees Fahrenheit.

“We’ve gone from a level of having graphene that forms OK as the furnace graphite, and we have graphene that forms great but is really tiny,” Boyd said. “We’ve got a method now to make really good graphene on a scalable process, so I think that’s exciting.”

Boyd and Caltech physics professor Nai-Chang Yeh’s white paper was published today in the journal Nature Communications. The Caltech technique allows graphene growths to be layered on top of each other, whereas current techniques allow only one layer, Boyd said. Yeh went into further detail.

“Previously people were only able to grow a few square millimeters of high-mobility graphene,” she said in a statement. “Typically it takes about 10 hours and nine to 10 different steps to make a batch of high-mobility graphene using high-temperature growth methods. Our process involves one step and takes five minutes.”

Graphene is a $20 million market in 2014, but it could grow to be a $390 million market by 2024, according to independent market researcher IDTechEx.

Boyd has filed about three provisional patents for a manufacturing technique he discovered through chance and lucky technology failures. In 2012, during his lunch break, he tried to recreate a furnace technique published in a scientific journal. Frustration rose as what he thought was a relatively simple recipe repeatedly produced charcoal, he said.

A phone call waylaid him from his “cooking” experiment for 15 minutes. When he returned, Boyd saw that a malfunction allowed trace amounts of methane vapor to trickle into his sample. The happy accident produced graphene.

After that light bulb moment, Boyd improved his methods. As a result, Caltech has been able to create graphene that is more electrically mobile than the current industry standard, he said.

So far Caltech has grown 1-centimeter graphene squares but it plans to grow them to up to 4 inches, Boyd said. And Caltech researchers will explore adding different molecules and compounds for varying effects. Graphene is like a baby, and the world has yet to see its full-grown potential, especially in earthquake-prone California, he said.

“You could imagine something crazy. You could wrap a building in graphene to keep it from falling over.”

He said to some extent that is hyperbole, but it is possible to imagine scenarios like that — lining something so things don’t fall down.

“Imagination is the first step, and one could imagine … maybe it could keep glass from cracking. I don’t know. Gases from escaping certain spaces. You could coat a statue with this so it doesn’t crumble.”

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